Altered
by LoneTread
Summary: AU. Johnny goes into a coma at age eleven. When he awakens years later, he finds everything irreparably changed. ON HOLD.
1. The Beginning

Disclaimer: I do not own anything you may recognize from the _Dead Zone_ television show. The characters are the property of their creator, Stephen King, and whoever else might own some kind of rights to them as used on the show. This particular alternate universe is, to my knowledge, my own, but regardless of changes I may have made, characters, incidents, etc, that you recognize do not belong to me. This applies in its entirety to all subsequent chapters of this story, as well.

And, with that out of the way, on to…

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Eleven-year-old Johnny Smith sat in silence in the back of the car, trying to fall asleep. They were coming home from a trip, and it was late. He half-heard his parents' voices. Then he heard a horn somewhere close, loud and long. Squealing tires, screeching brakes. Screams. His eyes jerked open.

Then he heard nothing more, and all he saw was darkness.

* * *

Johnny Smith blinked. When everything came into blurry focus, he realized he was in a hospital. He looked over at a nurse, curious and a bit bewildered. "Excuse me," he started.

The boy's confusion grew as the nurse turned to him, going pale. "You're awake?" she whispered, seemingly to herself.

"Yeah," he replied slowly, in a voice that communicated his disbelief that that was what had shocked her so much. "Yeah, why? How long have I been here?"

The nurse hesitated. "Six years."

"What?" No. No, this couldn't be possible. It had only been days. Just a few days, that's all. Or maybe a week. "Six _years_?"

The woman nodded reluctantly.

"So, what, I'm seventeen now?" Another nod. Johnny paused, thinking. Then: "Where are my parents? I want to see my parents. Please." He reached out and clasped her hand in his urgency. Images suddenly flooded his mind.

_What's happening?_ He was no longer in the hospital. How had he gotten here? Where was "here"? He looked around, and saw a little girl, no more than five, who appeared absolutely terrified. And he realized the house, whoever's house it was, was on fire. He had to do something. He had to do something. The child was cowering in fear from the flames. Why couldn't he feel the heat? Confused, scared –

– he dropped the nurse's hand and, an instant later, was back in the clean, white, sterile atmosphere of the hospital. Gone were the flames, and the smoke. And the little girl. Where had they gone? He had to do something.

"Do you have a daughter?" he asked the nurse still standing next to him. His words were spoken rapidly, jumbled together in his haste, but she'd understood him, and nodded.

"Yes, she's five," the nurse answered with a smile. "Meredith. Why do you ask?"

"I think something really bad's gonna happen. Maybe it's already happening, I don't know. But I think your house is gonna catch on fire. I have to stop it." His eyes were wide, frightened. "Please, can you call someone and make sure everything's okay?"

"I'm sure everything's fine, but thank you for your con–"

"_Please_," he begged, his tone oddly reminiscent of when, minutes ago, he'd pleaded for his parents. He'd nearly forgotten that now; life and death were surely more important. "Just call somebody and make sure. Please."

"Alright," she replied, resigned to the fact that the teen was not going to give up on this. She picked up the phone from its cradle nearby and Johnny heard her hit nine a few times to get to the outside world, then start on the area code.

"Who're you calling?" he asked out of curiosity.

"My neighbor, Jen," the nurse replied as she punched in the remaining numbers and listened to the phone ring on the other end. "Hi, Jen? It's Lisa. There's a kid here who's swearing my house is on fire. Could you check on it for me, for his sake?" A pause. "Thanks." Another, more drawn-out pause as Jen looked out the window. Suddenly, the nurse's eyes went wide. "Oh my _God_….Yes, would you? Thanks so much, Jen. Bye." Hanging up the phone, the woman turned to Johnny, incredulous. "She says she saw flames. She's calling the fire department."

"Oh, good," he responded. What else needed to be said?

"How – how did you know?" Okay, well there was that.

Johnny thought about it. "I don't know," he finally said. "I just…saw it. Like I was there." He shrugged. "It's never happened before. I don't know what it was."

And so it began.

* * *

A/N: I'm low on ideas at the moment. If anyone has some they'd like to share, feel free to suggest them. And regardless of whether you've got ideas, review please! This is my first real attempt at AU _and_ multi-chapter; how am I doing?


	2. The Aftermath

**A/N:** Thank you all for your reviews; I'm sorry for the wait. Just so you know, I'm not going to be following any canon laid out in "Babble On" concerning JS's childhood. And as for canon-JS's PT…well, I'm taking some creative license and pretending that, because he's young, he was alright in that regard and doesn't have to worry about PT. Just cause I don't want to bother. Anyway: here's the long-awaited Chapter Two.

* * *

Chapter 2: The Aftermath 

Soon, the still-astonished nurse had called Herb and Vera Smith, who arrived within minutes. Overjoyed that their son was awake and coherent, they insistently petitioned the hospital staff to let him come home.

Eventually, the doctors acknowledged with some resignation – and no end of amazement – that Johnny seemed perfectly healthy, and dismissed him from the hospital.

His parents happily updated him on some of what he'd missed throughout the car ride home. He tried to pay attention – much of it, admittedly, was interesting – but he couldn't help being distracted by the memory of what had happened earlier.

It still seemed so real. The flames danced before his mind's eye as he remembered what he had, somehow, seen, and a horrible thought occurred to him: had he _caused_ it? He considered this terrifying idea for a minute, then discarded it. After all, what he had seen had not actually happened. _But it could have._ And the more he thought about it, the more he reached just one conclusion.

It had been the future – a future that he'd changed.

He let his mind process this information, and felt the weight of the responsibility settle heavily on his shoulders. There was so much he could do with this ability, but he was just a kid. Why did this have to happen to _him_? And _how_ did it happen? He had so many questions, but he doubted that anyone would be able to give him the answers he sought; that this wasn't exactly a common occurrence was fairly obvious.

Going back over the incident for the thousandth time, he thought, though, that he might have at least figured out how it worked. He'd touched the nurse and seen her daughter – possibly, it had to do with his hands.

Reflectively, his thoughts on why, and how, and what he was going to do about it, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Maybe it was just a one-time thing, or maybe not – but he wasn't taking any chances.

* * *

Once they got home and he'd spent some time acclimating himself to the inevitable changes his home had undergone in the six years he'd been asleep, his father made a few phone calls and then told him, "I figure you might not be eager to really get back into the swing of things, but the school's gonna try and work out what to do with you. This kind of thing is, well, unprecedented, but they said to expect some kind of a test, probably some time next week, to decide what grade you'll be put in."

Johnny nodded, his mind immediately setting to work at an attempt to determine the odds he had of ending up the tallest kid in the entire middle school.

* * *

Despite his best efforts, Johnny had several more occurrences like the first throughout the next week. He still didn't like them much – it was always something of a shock when his present reality was pulled out from under him to be replaced with the future or, as he'd discovered was also possible, the past – but they were a little less frightening now.

He didn't have too much time to worry about the strange visions, regardless. He had a test to study for.

* * *

The next day marked the day of the test. Mumbling the Pythagorean Theorem under his breath, he climbed out of the car and entered the high school with his parents.

Vice-Principal Cunningham strode toward Johnny Smith with a smile, hand outstretched in greeting, and introduced himself.

"Johnny Smith," the boy replied, shaking the offered hand.

A careful observer would have noticed the faraway look in the teenager's eyes, but the vice principal wasn't paying attention.

Johnny, on the other hand, certainly was.

* * *

The exam was a true test of his memorization skills, but Johnny had been able to commit enough of what he'd seen to memory to answer a significant number of the questions, which he then used to solve several more. He thought that, with luck, he'd do fairly well.

Question sixty-four, though – was that A or C?

Shrugging, he halfheartedly ran a hand across the page. And winced at the red ink.

Well, it wasn't C.

Johnny marked A with a chuckle, and moved on to sixty-five.

He could get used to this.

* * *

**A/N: **I'm not terribly pleased with this chapter, but at least it's up, right? More importantly, I'm writing this as I go along, for the most part, so I have yet to give this story a satisfactory plot. Any suggestions for a possible plot that are reviewed/emailed to me will be considered and, if I incorporate one or more of them, credit will be given where it is due. So, if you've got ideas, share! That's all till next time. Thanks for reading!


	3. The Meeting

**A/N:** Thanks once again for the reviews; they continue to be appreciated. One reviewer wanted to know why I had Johnny cheat on his test. Well, I personally don't want to torment him anymore than he already has been, and putting him in seventh grade, or thereabouts, would do that. I did what was, to the best of my knowledge, the only way I could believably avoid that. Also, I had a request for dialogue (which I've tried to incorporate) and other characters from canon. Concerning the latter: I was sure that kid!Bruce would make his debut this chapter, but it just didn't happen. Chapter Four, for sure. As for this chapter, I've introduced plot, finally, though I'm not sure how well it's going to turn out. Regardless, thanks goes to Raidein for the idea. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 3: The Meeting

Johnny entered the school building apprehensively. His scores on the test had been high enough that he was now walking into the first day of sophomore year. As he followed the crowd into the auditorium to get his schedule, he supposed that he was lucky, at least, to be coming back at the beginning of the school year.

But then, as everyone dispersed to their classes, he discovered a problem inherent to his situation.

He was completely lost.

Gazing around the huge hallway, overwhelmed, he happened to spot Vice-Principal Cunningham walking in the opposite direction.

Amazed at his good fortune, he ran to catch up with Cunningham, doing so just as the latter entered the school's main office. "Mr. Cunningham!" he said. "How on Earth do you get to…um…room 221?"

Cunningham looked at him. "Well, I could just tell you," he responded, "that you go down this hallway, take a right, and go up the stairs, but I'll do you one better." He turned and looked around the office. A girl stood nearby – an office aide, if Johnny had to guess. "Katie!" Cunningham called to her, gesturing her over to them. "This is Johnny – he's new. Could you show him around?"

"Sure," she replied with a smile, extending a welcoming hand toward Johnny. "I'm Katie Rivera. I'm a senior this year, so don't worry, I know my way around pretty well."

Johnny, having shaken her hand, hadn't heard anything past her name. What was clearly the smell of alcohol assaulted his senses. It was suddenly dark, nighttime, but his eyes adjusted quickly and he looked around. That was when he realized he was in the driver's seat of a car that was weaving dangerously down the road.

Or the driver's _perspective_, at least, he amended as light from a street lamp glinted off the class ring on his hand; he could see it bore the graduation year of the current senior class. Meanwhile, it was becoming obvious that the alcohol he'd smelled was on his own breath, whoever he was now.

(**A/N: **In case it's difficult to tell, from this point on, through the end of the vision, "he" refers predominantly to the driver.)

He'd looked away from the road – not that keeping his eyes on the road was doing much good at the moment – and now he heard a panicked yell issue from the passenger seat. "Brad!"

He looked toward the source of the cry for a second; it was Katie, clad in a pretty black dress and evidently scared to death. He turned to the road again and the piercing rays of headlights got through to him. He wrenched the wheel to the right, but then realized, too late, that he'd overcorrected. Outside the windshield, a tree loomed, and he heard another terrified scream….

And Johnny snapped out of the vision, trembling.

"You okay?" Katie asked.

He nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. "Yeah."

"Alright," she said, shrugging, and led the way out of the office. "So, you were sick for Fish Camp?"

"Something like that…."

"Well," she said as they approached one set of doors, "this is the 100 Hall. It's mostly math classes. The hall over there" – she pointed to the opposite end of the hallway – "is the 300s. The science classes are in the middle. What's your first class?"

He checked his schedule. "Um, English."

"That'll be in the 200 Hall. It's right above the 100s," she informed him, making her way into the 100 Hall and taking the stairs, with Johnny following along behind her. She pointed out some of the other features of the school as they walked ("the library's right over there, and the cafeteria's across the school from the offices, just go that way as far as you can and you literally can't miss it…"). Then, Johnny spotted 221, which, according to his schedule, was his destination.

"There it is," he said to Katie. "Room two-twenty-one."

She looked over his shoulder at his schedule and nodded. "Yeah, you've got Wilson." She paused, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "Just get on his good side and you should be fine.

"Oh, and don't tell him you know me." She flashed Johnny a grin and left him outside his class.

Easing the door open slowly, he wondered what high school would be like. It seemed fine so far, but you never could tell.

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry about the author's note in the middle of the story; the site wouldn't let me put in asterisks to direct to a sort of footnote, which was my original intent. On that note, first-person visions are surprisingly difficult to write. Hopefully, you could figure out what was going on. (Don't worry, though – there won't be many more of those, if any.) So, how was the chappie? Review and let me know!


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